Biden Admits Plagiarism in School But Says It Was Not 'Malevolent'

By E. J. DIONNE Jr., Special to the New York Times

Published: September 18, 1987

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17—
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., fighting to salvage his Presidential campaign, today acknowledged ''a mistake'' in his youth, when he plagiarized a law review article for a paper he wrote in his first year at law school.

Mr. Biden insisted, however, that he had done nothing ''malevolent,'' that he had simply misunderstood the need to cite sources carefully. And he asserted that another controversy, concerning recent reports of his using material from others' speeches without attribution, was ''much ado about nothing.''

Mr. Biden, the 44-year-old Delaware Democrat who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, addressed these issues at the Capitol in a morning news conference he had called expressly for that purpose. The news conference was held just before he presided over the third day of hearings on the nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court.

To buttress his assertions of sincerity and openness, Mr. Biden released a 65-page file, obtained by the Senator from the Syracuse University College of Law, that he said contained all the records of his years there. It disclosed relatively poor grades in college and law school, mixed evaluations from teachers and details of the plagiarism.

Both the current dean of the law school and Mr. Biden's professor today played down the incident of plagiarism. [ Page A23. ] Brushing aside any suggestion that he might be forced to withdraw from the Presidential race, Mr. Biden declared at the news conference, ''I'm in the race to stay, I'm in the race to win, and here I come.'' Blames Rivals

Mr. Biden also suggested that the recent damaging information about him had originated with other campaigns, which he did not identify, and that it had emerged now because he was enjoying a chance in the limelight with the Bork hearings.

''Look, I'm a big boy,'' he said. ''I've been in politics for 15 years. This is not my style. If they want to do it this way, so be it.''

The file distributed by the Senator included a law school faculty report, dated Dec. 1, 1965, that concluded that Mr. Biden had ''used five pages from a published law review article without quotation or attribution'' and that he ought to be failed in the legal methods course for which he had submitted the 15-page paper.

The plagiarized article, ''Tortious Acts as a Basis for Jurisdiction in Products Liability Cases,'' was published in the Fordham Law Review of May 1965. Mr. Biden drew large chunks of heavy legal prose directly from it, including such sentences as: ''The trend of judicial opinion in various jurisdictions has been that the breach of an implied warranty of fitness is actionable without privity, because it is a tortious wrong upon which suit may be brought by a non-contracting party.'' Just One Footnote

In his paper, Mr. Biden included a single footnote to the Fordham Law Review article.

In a letter defending himself, dated Nov. 30, 1965, Mr. Biden pleaded with the faculty not to dismiss him from the school.

''My intent was not to deceive anyone,'' Mr. Biden wrote. ''For if it were, I would not have been so blatant.''

At another point, the young Mr. Biden said that ''if I had intended to cheat, would I have been so stupid?''

''I value my word above all else,'' the impassioned letter said. ''This is a fact which is known to all those who are or have been acquainted with my character.'' Misunderstanding, He Says

Mr. Biden said today, as he did 22 years ago, that he had misunderstood the rules of citation and footnoting.

''I was wrong, but I was not malevolent in any way,'' Mr. Biden said. ''I did not intentionally move to mislead anybody. And I didn't. To this day I didn't.''

The faculty ruled that Mr. Biden would get an F in the course but would have the grade stricken when he retook it the next year. Mr. Biden eventually received a grade of 80 in the course, which, he joked today, prevented him from falling even further in his class rank. Mr. Biden, who graduated from the law school in 1968, was 76th in a class of 85.

The file also included Mr. Biden's transcript from his days as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware. In his first three semesters, his grades were C's or D's, with three exceptions: two A's in physical education courses, a B in a course on ''Great English Writers'' and an F in R.O.T.C. The grades improved somewhat later but were never exceptional. Biden's Defense on Speeches

As for the issue of borrowing speeches, Mr. Biden was insistent that he had done nothing wrong. He said it was ''ludicrous'' to expect a politician to attribute all the quotations of others, and he cited two examples to support his argument.

One was from one of his adversaries for the Democratic nomination, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whom Mr. Biden described as ''a friend.'' Mr. Jackson, Mr. Biden said, has used the same part of a speech by Hubert H. Humphrey that Mr. Biden has been accused of improperly appropriating, and Mr. Jackson has called him to say so.

Robert F. Kennedy, another of those whose speeches have been echoed by Mr. Biden, also used passages without attribution, the Senator said.